Content

Bitnami Liferay for Huawei Cloud

Description

Liferay is a portal, web content management, and collaboration suite. It features tools such as a document library, off-line document sync, internal messaging, online interface, and more.

First steps with the Bitnami Liferay Stack

Welcome to your new Bitnami application running on Huawei Cloud! Here are a few questions (and answers!) you might need when first starting with your application.

What credentials do I need?

You need two sets of credentials:

The application credentials, consisting of a username and password. These credentials allow you to log in to your new Bitnami application.

The server credentials, consisting of an SSH username and key. These credentials allow you to log in to your Huawei Cloud server using an SSH client and execute commands on the server using the command line.

What is the administrator username set for me to log in to the application for the first time?

Username: user@liferay.com

What is the administrator password?

To obtain the administrator password, click the "Remote Login" menu option next to the server name in the Huawei Cloud Server Console. This will launch a new browser window with an encrypted login session. The application password will be displayed on the login welcome screen.

What SSH username should I use for secure shell access to my application?

SSH username: root

How do I get my SSH key or password?

You would have created or imported an SSH key pair at the time of deploying the server. Use the same key pair for secure shell access to the server. Click here for more information.

What are the default ports?

A port is an endpoint of communication in an operating system that identifies a specific process or a type of service. Bitnami stacks include several services or servers that require a port.

Remember that if you need to open some ports you can follow the instructions given in the FAQ to learn how to open the server ports for remote access.

Port 22 is the default port for SSH connections.

Bitnami opens some ports for the main servers. These are the ports opened by default: 80, 443.

How to start or stop the services?

Each Bitnami stack includes a control script that lets you easily stop, start and restart services. The script is located at /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh. Call it without any service name arguments to start all services:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

Or use it to restart a single service, such as Apache only, by passing the service name as argument:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

Use this script to stop all services:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Restart the services by running the script without any arguments:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart

Obtain a list of available services and operations by running the script without any arguments:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh

How to create a full backup of Liferay?

Backup

The Bitnami Liferay Stack is self-contained and the simplest option for performing a backup is to copy or compress the Bitnami stack installation directory. To do so in a safe manner, you will need to stop all servers, so this method may not be appropriate if you have people accessing the application continuously.

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory in which you wish to save your backup:

$ cd /your/directory

Stop all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Create a compressed file with the stack contents:

$ sudo tar -pczvf application-backup.tar.gz /opt/bitnami

Restart all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.tar.gz file to a safe location.

Restore

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory containing your backup:

$ cd /your/directory

Stop all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Move the current stack to a different location:

$ sudo mv /opt/bitnami /tmp/bitnami-backup

Uncompress the backup file to the original directoryv

$ sudo tar -pxzvf application-backup.tar.gz -C /

Start all servers:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

If you want to create only a database backup, refer to these instructions for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

How to enable SSL access over HTTPS?

You can configure Apache Tomcat to enable SSL access to applications using HTTPS. It is necessary to configure Tomcat with the location of the Apache SSL certificate, as described below.

Check that the certificate file is present at /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/conf/ssl/tomcat.cert.pem and the certificate key file is present at /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/conf/ssl/tomcat.key.pem.

Uncomment the following line in the /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/conf/server.xml file:

How to create an SSL certificate for Apache Tomcat?

How to enable HTTPS support with SSL certificates?

NOTE: The steps below assume that you are using a custom domain name and that you have already configured the custom domain name to point to your cloud server.

Bitnami images come with SSL support already pre-configured and with a dummy certificate in place. Although this dummy certificate is fine for testing and development purposes, you will usually want to use a valid SSL certificate for production use. You can either generate this on your own (explained here) or you can purchase one from a commercial certificate authority.

Once you obtain the certificate and certificate key files, you will need to update your server to use them. Follow these steps to activate SSL support:

Use the table below to identify the correct locations for your certificate and configuration files.

NOTE: If you use different names for your certificate and key files, you should reconfigure the SSLCertificateFile and SSLCertificateKeyFile directives in the corresponding Apache configuration file to reflect the correct file names.

If your certificate authority has also provided you with a PEM-encoded Certificate Authority (CA) bundle, you must copy it to the correct location in the previous table. Then, modify the Apache configuration file to include the following line below the SSLCertificateKeyFile directive. Choose the correct directive based on your scenario and Apache version:

Variable

Value

Apache configuration file

/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami.conf

Directive to include (Apache v2.4.8+)

SSLCACertificateFile "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server-ca.crt"

Directive to include (Apache < v2.4.8)

SSLCertificateChainFile "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server-ca.crt"

NOTE: If you use a different name for your CA certificate bundle, you should reconfigure the SSLCertificateChainFile or SSLCACertificateFile directives in the corresponding Apache configuration file to reflect the correct file name.

Once you have copied all the server certificate files, you may make them readable by the root user only with the following commands:

How to create an SSL certificate?

OpenSSL is required to create an SSL certificate. A certificate request can then be sent to a certificate authority (CA) to get it signed into a certificate, or if you have your own certificate authority, you may sign it yourself, or you can use a self-signed certificate (because you just want a test certificate or because you are setting up your own CA).

Note that if you use this encrypted key in the Apache configuration file, it will be necessary to enter the password manually every time Apache starts. Regenerate the key without password protection from this file as follows:

How to debug Apache errors?

Once Apache starts, it will create two log files at /opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/access_log and /opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/error_log respectively.

The access_log file is used to track client requests. When a client requests a document from the server, Apache records several parameters associated with the request in this file, such as: the IP address of the client, the document requested, the HTTP status code, and the current time.

The error_log file is used to record important events. This file includes error messages, startup messages, and any other significant events in the life cycle of the server. This is the first place to look when you run into a problem when using Apache.

How to change the Java memory settings?

You can increase these Java settings for your application if necessary. The settings are in the /opt/bitnami/java/bitnami/setenv.sh file. Here is an example of how to change the memory settings:

$ export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xms256M -Xmx768M"

IMPORTANT: This file is a symlink to a configuration file that changes depending on the instance type that you are currently using. The symlink will be automatically changed when you resize your server.

How to debug errors in Tomcat?

The main Apache Tomcat configuration file is at /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/conf/server.xml.

Once Apache Tomcat starts, it will create several log files in the /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/logs directory. The main log file is the catalina.out file where you can find error messages. On some platforms, you may need root account privileges to view these files.

How to upload files to the server with SFTP?

Although you can use any SFTP/SCP client to transfer files to your server, the link below explains how to configure FileZilla (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), WinSCP (Windows) and Cyberduck (Mac OS X). It is required to use your server's private SSH key to configure the SFTP client properly. Choose your preferred application and follow the steps in the link below to connect to the server through SFTP.